ELENA BAJO

MAY 28 – SEPTEMBER 5, 2010

Pastiche - When A Tree Falls in the Forrest…Sølyst Skulpturpark, Jyderup DK

"Pastiche - When A Tree Falls in the Forest ..."

In Sølyst Skulpturpark, Jyderup, DK

Curated by Laurie De Chiara and Tine Bundgaard Quedenbaum

Artists: A Kassen (DK), Elena Bajo (SP), Benandsebastian (DK), Olaf Breuning (CH), Ida Ekblad (NO), Ellen Harvey (UK), Hoefner/ Sachs (DE), Michael Johansson (SE), Ann Lislegaard (NO/DK), Mads Lynnerup (DK), Lone Haugaard Madsen (DK), Wolfgang Karl May (DE), Yudi Noor (ID), Stefan Saffer (DE), Ultragrøn (DK)

May 29 – September 5, 2010, opening reception Saturday, May 29 at 2- 6 pm

"if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it

make a sound?"

This philosophical riddle raises questions regarding observation and knowledge of reality, which is referenced throughout the exhibition. What one experiences is always personal and can be interpreted only from one's unique perspective. This presents the idea that when certain artworks are placed in a specific site they can take on an entirely new meaning thus exploring contextualization, placement and effect. Location and audience are pivotal components in the equation. Many of the artworks challenge the surroundings and explore ideas of how reality is perceived, and how viewers are “intended” to experience art. The artworks range from formally based whimsical sculptures, to social engagement platforms, to abstracted architectural

structures, and conceptual ready-made arrangements. Even though the exhibition does not follow the rules of a classic sculpture park, one is well aware that any artistic intervention within a rural setting can alter the landscape. Some of the artworks specifically play with the tradition of the romantic castle setting, such as May’s mirrored “ivory” tower, the abstracted bubbling fountain of Madsen, benandsebastian’s garden follie fragments in the forest, the dragon-like ornamental creature of Saffer, Johansson’s playful object-filled column, Bajo’s scenic viewing staircase overlooking the lake and the ornately painted carpet walkway of Harvey. All of which create slightly absurd architectural elements that comment on the current configuration. The artists have animated the site with their pluralistic ideas and materials resulting in fantastical works that stretch ones imagination and explore the concept of leisure time. There are a wide scope of works from Lynnerup “Daydreams” project, to the spiritual revitalization of a dead tree by Noor, Ekblad’s poetic spider web, Hoefner/Sachs transformed advertising poster into “Re-Sort” beach chairs, Ultragrøn’s intriguing periscope of illuminated color, Lislegaard’s crop circle, the talking trees of Breuning to Akassen’s permanent puddle. Together the works evoke curiosity and alter perspectives in the way of looking at art in a typical sculpture park environment, thus the whole park is now commented on in a variety of new ways. All of the artists created site-specific work for the exhibition and were invited to Sølyst to develop their ideas in respond to the site, location, culture, landscape, history, and environment. As the exhibition is supported and initiated by The Art

Workshops of Vestsjællands–VAK and Sølyst Artist in Residence Center, the artists were offered use of the fabrication workshop VAK and to live/work on location for the period of production. The Sølyst Skulpture Park is situated on a picturesque setting of a 18th century hunter's castle on a lake and the exhibition takes place on manicured lawns and surrounding public pathways that lead into the extensive forest area. Sølyst is located in the Center of Jyperup town in the countryside on the Island of Zealand, one hour west of Copenhagen. Site does play a significant role in the exhibition. Laurie De Chiara (US) is an independent curator based in Berlin/New York and Tine Bundgaard Quedenbaum(DK), Director of SAIR Center. Catalogue available on request with text by Gregory Volk.

For further information please contact Laurie De Chiara at ladechiara@gmail.com or Tine Bundgaard Quedenbaum at: tine@sair.dk

Sølyst Skulpturpark, Sølystvej 2 DK-4450 Jyderup +45 59 21 11 65 www.sair.dk

Do we ever really know the answer? The title of the exhibition, “…When a tree falls

in the forest”, references the larger philosophical riddle, "if a tree falls in a forest and

no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" which raises questions regarding

observation and knowledge of reality. It is an exploration of contextualization,

placement and effect. When certain artworks are placed in a specific site they can

take on an entirely new meaning. The exhibition also explores ideas of how reality is

perceived, and how viewers are “intended” to experience art. Unlike traditional

outdoor sculptures that are often “plooped” into a site, in this exhibition it is extremely

important that the artworks try to “engage” by encouraging an interactive element

and create a dialogue with the audience. A significant factor of the setting as a

public place is that all are welcome to view and participate at all times under any

circumstances. In consideration of the multiple perspectives of the audience,

perception plays a significant role in allowing room for facilitating changes in the ways

people see things, shifting attitudes and creating recognition.

The artworks in …when a tree falls in the forest…, range from formally based

whimsical sculptures, to abstracted architectural structures, to social engagement

platforms and conceptual ready-made arrangements. Even though the exhibition

does not following the rules of a classic sculpture park, we are well aware of the fact

that any artistic intervention within a rural setting such as the village of Jyderup and it

surroundings will always look like aliens just landed on the lawn to some people.

There are some artworks that specifically play with the tradition of the romantic castle

setting, such as the newly attached mirrored tower, the bubbling abstract fountain,

the garden follies in the edge of forest and the ornately painted carpet walkway which

create slightly absurd architectural elements that comment on the current

configuration.

Each of the works do to some degree involve the site and/ or community as a

component of their conceptual ideas. However the otherness, the strangeness

remains and the question is how the local or global community will open up for new

perceptions and thoughts. The artworks offer a wide range of perspectives for the

savvy art educated to the local teenagers to visit over the summer months, to love or

to hate, to be inspired by or ignored. I believe all of the artists had to consider the

viewers experience in their art-making process (more so than normally), considering

what their intention was from an artistic perspective and corresponding potential

outcomes. As it is a public space and there are less controls it does give for a wide

range of outcomes. Individuals take on the works personally.

Working in situ with artists, staff and local visitors during the production and installation

process opened up avenues for catalytic creative experience and transformation. For some of the international artists there was an enormous learning curve of how to get things accomplished in a way that did not push or offend, just as members of the local community would walk by on evening strolls just watching at a distance the process and

labor involved to produce the works. The park became an open studio for some in the month- long installation process. Some artists struggled with the influences of nature and the unpredictable extreme weather conditions of cold, wet, windy, growing landscape as nature changed with time into and around the works. These factors needed to be dealt with and considered as part of the artwork not knowing what would happen next. In many ways this exhibition is conceived and produced by the curators and artists but then it is taken on by the local context of nature and people. It is an exchange of ideas and experiences that

are evolving.

What happens if one takes art and in this case even art production outside the often

self –referential art world and into a context which does not specialize in art

perception and the cozy white cube setting? …When a tree falls in the forest, will it

have its affect? We know now that Iceland cannot be ignored because one small

black cloud from a volcano can affect all of us. So is the power of nature in context

we can only embrace the moment of uncertainty.

Laurie De Chiara

Outdoor Excursions

Gregory Volk

1.

In the summer of 2005, together with my wife and son (who was three years old at

the time), I visited Robert Smithson’s great earthwork Spiral Jetty, a spiral shape

made of salt-encrusted boulders and crusty earthen mounds jutting into the Great

Salt Lake in a part of Utah so remote, weird, inhospitable, and science fictive that

it seems not of this world. We spent an entire day, night, and part of the next

morning at and walking on Smithson’s work, an experience that was both

marvelous and illuminating. For one thing, the work does not seem very

monumental, as it usually does in photographs. Instead, it seems rather modest,

even humble: not a sculpture imposed on the landscape but rather one that merges

and blends with the landscape, including the shoreline, lake, and sky, but also

nearby corroded piers, broken down trailers, and rusted implements. Conflating the

microscopic and the macrocosmic, Spiral Jetty suggests spiraling galaxies and the

intricate spiral structures of salt crystals; wonders in the heavens millions of light

years distant, and the wonders right in front of you, which you’d hardly notice at

first glance. It also constantly changes over the course of a day, from luminous

white in pinkish red water to a somber grayish black in blue water; this is a work

that invites and rewards patient observation and contemplation. Even though it is

largely made of stones, it seems hyper alert to everything in its vicinity: to the

vicissitudes of changing light, passing clouds, the great horizontal expanse of the

lake, and really to a vast scale of time, including endless cycles of creation and

destruction. Spiral Jetty also has a tremendous psychological impact. You feel

contemplative and concentrated but also remarkably open and invigorated. You

sense, as well, something unexpectedly playful and insouciant about Smithson’s

effort: another rambunctious kid rattling around the shoreline with his bulldozer

and loud truck, another energetic kid tossing stones into a lake.

For me, Spiral Jetty sets a tremendous standard when it comes to outdoor art, not

simply because it is obviously a masterwork of Earth art, but because of its

extraordinary openness to the entirety of the site, and its impact on one humanly; it

is both the result of, and conduit to, keyed-up experiences in nature marked by

wonderment, vastness, bewilderment, and upsweep. While Smithson was

skeptical of spirituality in art and frankly dismissive of any claims that there is

something beneficent and morally uplifting about nature, Spiral Jetty really is

mind-bending and sublime, and really does spark a radically heightened

consciousness for the viewer. Even though I understand that Smithson was not

motivated by romantic inclinations, I’m still reminded of a famous passage in the

American Transcendentalist poet/philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1836 essay

Nature, one of the few times, by the way, when this theorist of how ecstatic

encounters in nature could then be channeled into poetry and art attempted to

describe what one of those encounters actually felt like. Emerson begins,

“Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky,

without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have

enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear.” He then goes on to

memorably declare, "I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the

currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part and parcel of

God.” I love that great, strange, proto-surreal image of a “transparent eyeball,”

evoking a free-flowing, almost egoless exchange between self and nature, self and

world. Such an image also points toward a kind of art-making that involves a

similar flowing exchange between an artwork and its environment, which

characterizes Spiral Jetty, but which also might be pertinent for quite a number of

recent and current works engaging nature, including those in the exhibition

Pastiche…When a tree falls in the forest. It is also interesting that Emerson’s

“transparent eyeball” moment occurred not in some remote and stupendous

wilderness, but close to home on a “bare common”: in a local park, that is,

perhaps not all that different from the grounds surrounding Sølyst Castle.

2.

Sculpture parks, of course, can be valuable and wonderful, in part because they

promise a direct and inspired relationship between artworks and nature, maybe

even something of Emerson’s “transparent eyeball” openness. Potentially, at least,

they offer a cathartic and perhaps even sublime experience for the viewers

(viewers largely accustomed to seeing artworks indoors), yet very often just the

opposite happens: an experience of genial delectation, a pleasant afternoon

outdoors encountering artworks that tend to be pleasing, satiety and ease as

opposed to something disruptive and transformative.

Probably this occurs because sculpture parks often come with a whole host of

expectations and protocols, ingrained rules and assumptions, all of which tend to

limit the potentially cathartic power of the artworks, and severely influence and

limit the viewer’s experience. Sculptures tend to be sizable, made of durable

materials capable of withstanding nature, and elegantly sited: all those large,

abstract works made of metal, stone, or wood, for instance. As you gaze at them,

you also take in your lovely surroundings, but comfortably so: the bountiful sky,

the rolling lawn, the excellent horizon. While these sculptures are installed in

nature, this is usually an exceedingly tamed and circumscribed nature: mown

lawns that resemble golf courses or the grounds of a manor, pruned bowers,

interesting footpaths in the woods. It is likely that many such sculpture parks,

while positing a fresh and unfettered encounter with artworks in nature, are

actually far closer to the revivifying yet ultra-civilized 18th and 19th century French

and English gardens that offered the bourgeoisie pleasant refuge from their busy

lives, and that also decorated or “improved” nature with all sorts of human

accoutrements like statuary, fountains, and picturesque architecture. It is also

likely that while many sculpture parks seem to offer a welcome escape from

institutional interiors, they are actually suffused with big news of the indoors, in

effect transposing gallery or museum conditions outside: lawns and meadows

become really large museum floors, woods and horizons become gigantic museum

walls. There’s nothing wrong with any of this, of course, and excellent artworks

abound in such sculpture parks, but still the entire context might be in need of

some renovation, rethinking, and, disruption. And perhaps some thoughtful

wildness as well.

There are signs that this is happening, as sculpture parks gradually become

considerably more flexible in terms of what works they present. However, when

it comes to such renovation, it seems to me that temporary works, and temporary

group exhibitions outdoors, are exceptionally valuable, not because they articulate

a new proposal or a fresh ideology for sculpture parks altogether, but because in

their very temporariness and impermanence (in places that tend to favor

permanence as a matter of course) they have the immediate freedom and license to

reimagine (with intelligence, humor, nuttiness, and risk, for example) how outdoor

works function in a sculpture park, how the audience interacts with them, and

indeed what kind of works, and in what mediums, might be suited for a sculpture

park altogether.

The exhibition Pastiche…When a tree falls in the forest, at Sølyst Castle, curated

by Laurie De Chiara and Tine Bundgaard Quedenbaum, is both an important

addition to how sculpture parks operate, and a joyful and intelligent disruption of

usual expectations for a sculpture park. Many of the works were made by artists

who would not normally be identified with outdoor art, and they are animated by a

spirit of intelligent, yet gleeful and reckless, adventure. Materials are eclectic,

wide-ranging, and unorthodox, and while each work is wonderfully idiosyncratic,

together they acutely emphasize and transform exactly how viewers perceive not

only artworks in such an environment, but also the environment altogether (a

special castle and its special grounds). Humor, irreverence, and willful wackiness

all abound (which is entirely welcome, given the air of reverence and sobriety that

seems to encompass most sculpture parks) but then so too do a sophisticated touch

with materials, a complex acknowledgment of history, and a convincing

reappraisal of the relationship between artworks and nature in these times.

Castles and manors are renowned for featuring exquisite paintings on their walls

and for rolling out red carpets to welcome visitors to elegant soirees. Ellen Harvey

acknowledges this cultural tradition, yet also upends it, with a gorgeous outdoor

painting that starts at the castle’s back terrace, spills down its steps, and

ceremoniously ushers visitors outdoors, into nature, and to where the other works

in the exhibition are installed throughout the grounds. Ann Lislegaard has

engineered her own science fiction astonishment, with a homemade crop circle that

alludes to alleged signs of alien visitations, yet her work also suggests the many

ways that nature has been accorded magical and supernatural attributes through the

centuries. Yudi Noor has devised his own magical moment in nature. By

festooning a dead tree with fluorescent tubes, a wooden door, a security mirror,

and taut strands of red rope, he restores it to life as an antic and enthralling force.

The collaborative group AKassen (Christian Bretton-Meyer, Morten Steen

Hebsgaard, Søren Petersen, and Tommy Petersen) has also devised a magical

moment in nature, but an especially quiet and subtle one. For the duration of the

exhibition, AKassen will have water poured everyday into an indentation in a dirt

road near the castle, forming a puddle. If it is a rainy day the puddle will be there

as accustomed, but on hot, dry days it will “miraculously” be there as well; this

ever present puddle is a perfect conflation of things so known and normal that you

hardly notice them at all and spectacular things that stop you in your tracks. In a

mural at a local 14th century church, Stefan Saffer found a fantastical, mythical,

dragon-like creature, which he rescued from history and also brought back to life,

so to speak, as several small cast sculptures frolicking in different places around

the park. At once goofy and oddly grave, Saffer’s creatures fuse medieval beasts

and modern tsotchkes, while they also guide the viewer to an alert engagement

with the whole site.

As one experiences these works, in this particular setting, one’s perspective

constantly shifts and one’s perceptions are constantly challenged, making for an

exceptionally active and experiential exhibition. You look at Elena Bajo’s spare,

yet lovely staircase and viewing platform made of iron, along with a wonderful old

colored window on top, but also through, into, and beyond it, and while it offers a

splendid vista of the lake it also suggests huge distances and immensities.

Ultragrøn has installed a fantastical, underground miniature world of lights, water

fountains, and mirrors that can only be seen from above, by looking through a

periscope, while Ida Ekblad’s ersatz spider’s web made of iron, with actual vines

and old leaves inside, has storytelling, fablelike, perhaps dreamlike connotations as

it also responds to the nearby lake. Mads Lynnerup has constructed a bare bones

gazebo, including a peculiar viewing device resembling a row of cupped hands

that lets one peer across the water at another small structure in the distance—part

telescope and part surveillance device. Negotiating distances is important for each

of these works, which invite concentration on themselves, but also inspire the

viewer to look out and beyond, and to respond to the site in total. Olaf Breuning’s

Complaining Forest is a hilarious subversion of how wonderful it usually is to

gaze at and enter a lovely forest. His forest is strung with complaints like

“Ouch!,” “Argh!,” “Ugh!,” and “Brr!,” as if a bunch of beleaguered and irascible

trees were all voicing their complaints, but even here you look both at and through

Breuning’s words, which also function as scrims or portals, into the forest depths.

Several of the works in …When a tree falls in the forest allude to plausible and

familiar structures that could easily belong to such a site, but give these structures

a startling new look and identity. Wolfgang Karl May has fastened his own

peculiar silver tower made of plywood and mirror foil to the Sølyst hunting castle;

you can climb up and enter this tower to luxuriate in an interior fitted with soft

pink fur. Gathering sundry materials from a workshop, including a garden hose

and pump, Lone Haugaard Madsen has devised an idiosyncratic, yet functioning

(albeit in a faltering, sputtering, abject sort of way) fountain, while

benandsebastian’s circular sculpture made of architectural fragments connects with

the tradition of architectural follies which enjoyed something of a heyday in the

18th century and to a lesser extent the 19th century, but which still continues now:

oddball architectural works so unusual, rule-breaking, and obsessive that they

inhabit their own weird terrain on the far, far outskirts of what is considered

permissible and acceptable. Franz Hoefner and Harry Sachs, known for their

synthesis of architecture and art, contribute their own version of a summer resort.

Rows of lounge chairs or beach chairs made of recycled wood scraps and large

travel-industry advertisement posters, along with four umbrellas, offer visitors

relaxation and escape, in the process highlighting how journeys into nature have

become such a leisure time respite from the ordinary grind, but also connecting

with an age-old desire that such outings be restorative and psychologically,

perhaps even spiritually, transportive. Many of the artists in the exhibition

emphasize scavenged materials and low-tech solutions. Michael Johansson

gathered all sorts of colorful, around the park, or around the garden materials like

plastic coolers and bins, which he has stacked into an excised section of a

building’s façade. His bright intervention makes this part of the building radiant,

and also conflates indoor and outdoor spaces and activities.

Throughout the exhibition, the art on view is both conceptually keen and visually

lively, as it effectively responds in multiple ways to a striking and compelling site.

Obviously, this exhibition takes many risks with the whole notion of public art in

sculpture gardens, and in this sense adventurous curation meshes well with some

very adventurous art. What results is a thoughtful, quirky, and challenging

excursion for viewers, a trip to a powerful and particularly evocative elsewhere

that happens to be temporarily populated by powerful and evocative works.

Gregory Volk

Excerpts from the first section of this essay were previously published, in a

somewhat altered form, in my essay “Transparent Eyeball: Toward a

Contemporary Sublime,” Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape, MASS MoCA,

North Adams, MA, USA, 2009.

Elena Bajo, "The crystal of non-knowledge, a landscape to be invented" Imprisoned by four walls (to the North, the crystal of non-knowledge, a landscape to be invented, to the South, reflective memory, to the East, the mirror, to the West, stone and the song of silence) I wrote messages, but received no reply (Octavio Paz) An old reclaimed utilitarian staircase stripped of the building it was part of and now free standing and re-contextualized in the middle of the forest, a stained glass window at the end of the stairs, a device to color frame the landscape. A dysfunctional object in this environment becomes alive competing with the surrounding trees for the light at sunrise, a poetic tool; looking through the glass to imagine the colors of the world on the other side, a political tool, a device to re-frame the world. 'The world of perception, or in other words the world which is revealed to us by our senses and in everyday life, seems at first sight to be the one we know best of all. ... Yet this is a delusion. ... the world of perception is, to a great extent, unknown territory as long as we remain in the... utilitarian attitude.' (Merleau-Ponty, The World of Perception, p.39).

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